A deafening bang resounded.
Chen was immediately blown away, taking his knives with him. He continued to slam against the ground over and over, rolling over several times and even coughing up blood.
Yet, despite taking all of that, he slammed his fist into the ground and forced himself to stand up. His eyes were wide open and bloodshot. It was clear that Chen wouldn’t go down without a fight.
As for Kairos, he couldn’t help but find himself extremely impressed by Chen’s durability once more. Despite having the advantage of limit broken stats, he was still unable to fully suppress him. Once again, Chen had taken a blow that he was pretty sure would’ve killed himself, had he been on the receiving end.
But regardless, he was still feeling pretty favored in this situation. Although his body was a little weary from taking on the drain effect of Chen’s daggers, it was still bearable for him.
Chen slowly stood up on both feet before looking forth for a moment. From the way his eyelids were lazily drooping, it wasn’t too hard to deduce that he was in a daze. At the very least, it seemed he sustained significant damage.
Kairos rubbed his chin in thought.
After a little while, he realized that Chen basically had no method of ranged attack. The best thing that he had was throwing his daggers, but there was no way those would hit even if he tried some tricks, especially not with Kairos’ future vision.
This naturally led to him thinking of the darkness spell. If nothing else, it would greatly obscure his nearby vision, essentially rendering him useless.
With that in mind, Kairos began channeling the darkness spell, holding his hand out like a claw, and a tiny little black ball with a strange smile formed on top. As for Chen, he was still looking at Kairos, but his vision gradually shifted to someone else.
Nicole.
She was still watching the battle, and from her expression, it seemed as though she was just waiting for Chen to die. She didn’t think it was possible for Chen to win, and was probably right in thinking so.
This could be seen in the desperate look Chen was beginning to wear, as his judgment gradually faltered. Out of nowhere, he sprinted forth.
Kairos went to the side, but it would turn out he didn’t need to, as Chen had no intention of running toward him. Instead, he wanted to get to Nicole. Seeing this, Kairos didn’t do anything other than continue to channel his darkness spell.
Though there was a part of him that thought about helping Nicole, she really didn’t need it. As such, he just watched on as Chen ran towards Nicole like a crazy person, intending on capturing her to use as a hostage.
Then phase straight through her, before collapsing onto his face.
His body was shaking rather violently. It seemed that this entire time, he had slowly been coming to a revelation. The only way he would ever hit Kairos, was if Kairos wanted to get hit.
Chen may not have been fighting long, but he could already tell that there was a gap between them. It didn’t feel like a quantitative gap, but for some reason, it felt so overwhelming anyway.
He got up and looked at Kairos once more, but his gaze seemed quite different from normal.
“I already know that I’m weaker than you. After looking at this promotion mission, I already understand why you want to kill me. But it doesn’t have to be me, right? I can… help you get someone else.”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“What are you talking about? Sure you can help us take care of Pablo, but we still need to kill two of you. We both have to complete our respective missions after all.”
Chen looked rather confused.
“W-What? Er… but surely there’s someone else! I could… I could…”
Kairos sighed.
“And why exactly should I make it more difficult for myself when you’re right in front of me?”
The corner of Chen’s lip twitched.
“I… I still have to make it back to help everyone! By killing me, you’ll be killing so many more people as well!”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“…But it’s not like you really planned on coming back for them, did you? At most, it was a lie you told yourself.”
Chen furrowed his brows intensely.
“Huh? That was never the case! I was always going to come back for them. I… I would never…”
As he was speaking, someone else called out from a distance.
“What happened?”
It was Pablo. He ran up towards them with a rather grim expression. He didn’t know exactly what was happening, but it was fairly clear that he was concerned about Chen’s condition. He was also in no rush, as the situation to him looked like they had gotten attacked, but were now fine.
After all, they were just standing around rather than fighting.
When Kairos noticed Pablo’s presence, the corner of his lip twitched. It would be inconvenient if he also joined the battle, but he imagined Nicole should be able to deal with him.
However, Chen did something strange. Instead of calling out to Pablo to help, his eyes widened all the way.
“What? Y-You… You’re alive?”
Pablo furrowed his brows.
“Yeah, did you really think those lame traps could do me in or something? You’re underestimating me way too much.”
Chen grabbed onto the side of his head before shaking it violently.
“No… no… you shouldn’t be alive.”
Pablo stared back only with more confusion.
“Huh? Since when?”
Chen tilted his head to the side ever so slightly.
“I… killed you.”
Pablo furrowed his brows.
“What? But I’m right here.”
Kairos came to understand what was happening relatively quickly. Chen also had one of those experiences like him, except he had to sacrifice Pablo in some capacity. And in the end, that’s what he did.
The only issue was, that never actually happened.
Pablo seemed to come to understand as well.
“Ah, are you talking about that thing you had to go through to clear the first floor? That obviously wasn’t real. I mean, how would all of the others have even gotten in the dungeon in the first place? They had injuries, remember?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly. It seemed Pablo didn’t yet realize they had different experiences. He coughed.
“Um, we all had different things to go through, you know?”
Pablo blinked a few times as his gaze slowly shifted towards Chen.
“Oh… wait, you killed me? But why?”
The corner of Chen’s lip twitched.
“I… I had to if I wanted to stay alive! Plus it wasn’t even real…”
Pablo frowned.
“You… you would sacrifice me?”
Chen’s eyes widened with hatred.
“Shut up! You were the one that wanted to sacrifice everyone else!”
Pablo was taken aback, before averting his gaze. He did not respond to Chen, and from his expression, it didn’t look like he was going to be talking to him anytime soon.
Kairos cleared his throat.
“You see, I’ve been trying to subdue Chen this entire time. As you can tell… he’s been losing it a little. I don’t think he’s going to rest until he dies though.”
Chen furrowed his brow.
“What? You were the one that attacked me first!”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“What are you talking about? We were attacked by another enemy, then you assumed that it was me and began attacking me.”
Pablo frowned further when he heard that. It looked like he had already completely lost faith in Chen.
“I… I always thought that you were a good leader. I never knew I was mistaken.”
Chen grit his teeth.
“You clearly admitted to it!”
Kairos let out a sigh.
“And now you’re making up excuses. It looks like you really are beyond saving…”
As he was talking, he didn’t stop peeking at the growing black phantom in his hand. By now, he had channeled it for fifteen seconds which was enough for him at this point. However, he felt it would be bad to release it now.
While Kairos didn’t think Pablo wasn’t a threat, he also wanted him to grow to also reach the peak of D rank so that Nicole could complete her part of the mission. Though her fourth mission would be significantly harder, he also figured that upon completing the fourth one, she wouldn’t have “killed” her target, thus this was something she would have to do eventually.
As for Chen, his expression suddenly fell. It seemed as though he came to understand something. His eyes narrowed.
“…Fine then. See if you can find me.”
He completely gave up on trying to convince Pablo. In fact, the entire time he didn’t really care about convincing him, it was more so to convince himself. And once he felt the situation wasn’t recoverable, he decided to run.
He turned around and rushed towards the expanse of blackness. At this point, Kairos’ darkness spell had been channeled for thirty seconds, creating a phantom that had become to look like a snake with two prominent horns.
Surprisingly enough, it had actually shrunk in size rather than expanding, which made it a little more discreet.
Kairos saw that Chen was running to that place and couldn’t help but think this plan was now rather flawed.
After all, if they all couldn’t see, impairing the vision was rather pointless.
Nonetheless, Kairos released it without too much hope. The snake let out a hiss as it pounced on Chen. Chen hadn’t even realized it before it was too late. Upon making contact with him, it suddenly disappeared.
And Chen froze in place.
Kairos, Nicole, and Pablo didn’t see anything. Instead, Chen just stood there strangely, almost like he had become a statue. Though Kairos remembered what effects it had before, and assumed that his surroundings had just turned black.
But that only made him more confused, as it wasn’t something all that strange. If anything, he should’ve reacted strangely after a few seconds.
It was then that Kairos realized Chen was slowly looking up into the air as if there was something there. This only confused him further.
What Kairos didn’t know was that the darkness spell could do far more than just scare someone.
As someone already in an unstable mental state, and after channeling it for long enough, the spell had fundamentally changed in its purpose.
Chen saw his surroundings darken. But there was more than just black. Eerie structures gradually began forming out of the ground, towering over him. Chains hung off from several different places, and within those chains were people, tied up like they were actually cocoons.
And Chen saw those very chains begin shooting towards him.